- The term "electro-sensitivity" ([This text] has been created to help draw attention to the issue of electro-sensitivity) was new to me. Even after the piece I was uncertain, so I looked it up: "Claimed sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, resulting in negative symptoms. EHS has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical diagnosis" - so says Wikipedia, anyway.- I was intrigued by the initial directions explaining that to advance some aspects of the piece, the reader would need to solve a simple puzzle.
From reading:- I had never heard of "ba-xi" before. - This narrative summary, also from Wikipedia, demonstrates how much more linear this piece is than the previous one: "Alice is eight years old and living in a base camp in far north China. Her dad, John, scouts for oil. He is two days late in coming home from his latest trip. Alice and her mom, Ming, haven’t heard from him. They are worried. While she and her mom go out searching for her dad, Alice turns to her ba-xi player and her virtual friend Brad for comfort. They drive for a long time. Suddenly, Alice hears Brad’s voice in her head to ‘go that way.’ And they find her dad." - I wondered about the reasoning behind accumulating an iconographic table of contents along the right-hand edge as the story progressed. - I noticed that in 2012, Inanimate Alice was named a Best Website for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians. While I found the story painless to work through and generating a certain amount of suspense, I was curious what particularly won the attention associated with this award. Website commentary I considered said it "has been applauded as one of the most exciting and cutting edge interactive graphic novels." Later they claimed that "it stimulates engagement and develops a degree of immersion not experienced with linear storytelling." Maybe the later installments are dramatically different, but to me this storytelling seemed linear, unless I was misunderstanding the impact of clicking on the forward buttons. - Here's another outside comment: "Berzolla and Willey were some of the first Canadian teachers to use Inanimate Alice in class when they presented it to Grade 7 students in their district last fall. “The advances in technology are changing the ways kids read, so the way we teach needs to change,” said Willey. Inanimate Alice, with its impressive audiovisual effects, appears no different from a video game. But its driving force is the pithy narration and clever use of literary devices. “With this program, the walls between the written text and the multimedia world are broken down, and kids who are reluctant to read tend to be drawn in,” said Berzolla. They have seen encouraging results: Reluctant readers are discovering a passion for literature, including print, and those who were already reading are being inspired to write their own stories."
- The term "electro-sensitivity" ([This text] has been created to help draw attention to the issue of electro-sensitivity) was new to me. Even after the piece I was uncertain, so I looked it up: "Claimed sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, resulting in negative symptoms. EHS has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical diagnosis" - so says Wikipedia, anyway.- I was intrigued by the initial directions explaining that to advance some aspects of the piece, the reader would need to solve a simple puzzle.
From reading:- I had never heard of "ba-xi" before.
- This narrative summary, also from Wikipedia, demonstrates how much more linear this piece is than the previous one: "Alice is eight years old and living in a base camp in far north China. Her dad, John, scouts for oil. He is two days late in coming home from his latest trip. Alice and her mom, Ming, haven’t heard from him. They are worried. While she and her mom go out searching for her dad, Alice turns to her ba-xi player and her virtual friend Brad for comfort. They drive for a long time. Suddenly, Alice hears Brad’s voice in her head to ‘go that way.’ And they find her dad."
- I wondered about the reasoning behind accumulating an iconographic table of contents along the right-hand edge as the story progressed.
- I noticed that in 2012, Inanimate Alice was named a Best Website for Teaching and Learning by the American Association of School Librarians. While I found the story painless to work through and generating a certain amount of suspense, I was curious what particularly won the attention associated with this award. Website commentary I considered said it "has been applauded as one of the most exciting and cutting edge interactive graphic novels." Later they claimed that "it stimulates engagement and develops a degree of immersion not experienced with linear storytelling." Maybe the later installments are dramatically different, but to me this storytelling seemed linear, unless I was misunderstanding the impact of clicking on the forward buttons.
- Here's another outside comment: "Berzolla and Willey were some of the first Canadian teachers to use Inanimate Alice in class when they presented it to Grade 7 students in their district last fall. “The advances in technology are changing the ways kids read, so the way we teach needs to change,” said Willey. Inanimate Alice, with its impressive audiovisual effects, appears no different from a video game. But its driving force is the pithy narration and clever use of literary devices. “With this program, the walls between the written text and the multimedia world are broken down, and kids who are reluctant to read tend to be drawn in,” said Berzolla. They have seen encouraging results: Reluctant readers are discovering a passion for literature, including print, and those who were already reading are being inspired to write their own stories."